Embodiments described herein relate generally to port redundancy, and, in particular, to port redundancy at a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) gateway device.
Some known FCoE to Fibre Channel gateway devices can associate one or more virtual ports with a single physical port to send data to a Fibre Channel switch. In such embodiments, if an error is detected at the single physical port, the virtual ports associated with that single physical port are no longer able to send data to the Fibre Channel switch. Additionally, each virtual port performs a subsequent login to the Fibre Channel switch after the error at the physical port is repaired. Such a subsequent login can further increase the time the virtual ports are unable to send data to the Fibre Channel switch.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods and apparatus that provide redundancy for the virtual ports of a FCoE to Fibre Channel gateway device.